Ornoth

I find myself in the mood to record a brief rundown of the major events of 2011.

In terms of my Buddhist practice, a few nice things happened. I completed a year of dedicated compassion practice, I became a paying member of CIMC for the first time, I began volunteering to read announcements at Wednesday evening dhamma talks, I continued attending CIMC’s Long-Term Yogis practice group, did another sandwich retreat, and attended our kalyana mitta group’s first weekend retreat. My daily practice thrived, partially due to finding time to sit during my lunch hour at work, and partially thanks to the mild competition fostered by the Insight Timer Android app, which allows one to earn badges and see how often one’s Facebook friends are sitting. Overall, I am comfortable with my meditation practice and happy with the results.

As alluded to, I also went back to work after a 2-year hiatus. Like any job, the new gig has its ebb and flow of both rewards and annoyances, but the influx of cash is certainly welcome. And despite having to overcome frequent outbreaks of stupid amongst my coworkers, I am getting to do the frontend design and development work that I enjoy. Unfortunately, it’s the longest commute I’ve had in a long time, but during the summer that gives me the opportunity to get some weekday bike rides in.

On the cycling front, the miles I gained by commuting didn’t quite offset the fact that working for a living meant I couldn’t spend summer days riding, so this year my mileage dropped from 5,000 to 3,000. But the income gave me the opportunity to do a long-needed complete overhaul of my bike and buy a new mapping GPS cyclo-computer. And I still did all my major events, racking up seven centuries, only one less than I rode in 2010. Notable rides included a rainy Jay Peak in Vermont with my buddy Jay, and a rainy three-state century with Paul and Noah. And I even had a training question published in the online magazine RoadBikeRider.

This year’s Pan-Mass Challenge was very memorable, as well. I began the season by attending my first PMC Heavy Hitter banquet and also the dedication of the PMC Plaza that comprises the entrance to Dana-Farber’s brand-new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care. I shared the ride itself with Jay, who enjoyed his first PMC. And despite riding on a loaner wheel because I discovered cracks in mine at the last minute, I still did my fastest Saturday ride ever. After the ride, I was delighted to find that a photo of me leading a paceline occupied the PMC Home Page for more than three months, and then was used again in a thank-you advertisement that Dana-Farber placed in 105 local newspapers throughout Massachusetts. Being the PMC’s poster boy and attending the dedication of the PMC Plaza both made me immensely proud of the years of work I’ve dedicated to the PMC and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Despite all that, I have to say that I was frustrated by this year’s cycling season. This was the first time that I had clearly lost ground against my riding buddies, who admittedly are 20 years younger than I am. I don’t know whether that fall-off was because my competitive spirit has lessened, because work prevented me from training more, because of the natural fall-off due to aging, or whether there might be something more serious going on. All I know is that some of my rides (especially the Climb to the Clouds and the Flattest Century) were really painful, unpleasant slogs this year.

In the same vein, this was the first year where I felt that my health had declined. I found myself fighting frequent intense headaches that often included nausea and vomiting, especially when I traveled (which turned the Flattest Century and Jay’s Labor Day ride around Mt. Wachusett into terrible experiences). I also noticed that I sometimes experience cardiac issues when riding flat-out, where I feel a sharp, intense pain in my chest and my heart rate drops by about 15 bpm for 30 to 60 seconds. These have, of course, been added to the list of things that I need to bring to my PCP, but they’re also the first indications that my body is starting to decline. Which brings me right back around to my spiritual practice!

In other noteworthy events, I observed my tenth anniversary of buying my condo, and remain extremely pleased with that. I got to see the Cars perform live, which was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event. I got around to making ice cream flavored with Pixy Stix candy with SweeTarts bits mixed in, which was fun but not quite the confectionery orgasm that I was hoping for. And I decided to punt on my planned trip to California for the second year in a row; the good news being that I am more committed than ever to making it happen in 2012.

Speaking of which, I’m not making too many plans for 2012, but there are already some themes emerging. I’m going to spend a week on the Riviera Maya (outside Cancun) with Inna. I’m finally doing my first residential meditation retreat at IMS (5 days). I’m once again going to try to make California happen in September. Of course I’ll be doing my 12th Pan-Mass Challenge and probably Outriders, but I also hope to do some new cycling events, such as the Mt. Washington Century, the Eastern Trail Maine Lighthouse Ride, and/or the Buzzards Bay Watershed Ride.

So if things work out, 2012 will be an interesting year, too. With just nine hours until it begins, here’s hoping!

Haven’t been inspired to write much lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. So I guess it’s time for another potpourri posting. I’ll try to be brief, although there are a lot of little things to go over, and a few lengthy ones.

Everyone always asks me about employment first, so… I haven’t found anything yet. I haven’t been too worried about that, since you learn as a consultant to save during good times to get through the bad, and there’s nothing like taking a year or two of your retirement when you’re young enough to get out and enjoy it. At the same time, it’s really time to make this a top priority, now that summer’s over.

However, it amused me to no end to find a TED talk by a designer who totally espoused my beliefs about taking time off during one’s working years, and demonstrated some fabulous design work that came as a result. Check out the nice, eloquent, short talk here.

Ironically, my net worth right now—nearly a year after being laid off—is the highest it’s been in seven years. More surprising still is that if I go back to the last time my net worth was this high, it was December 2002, about a year after I was laid off from Sapient. What is it about being laid off that causes me to get richer, when one would normally expect one’s savings to be depleted in no time?

Well, actually it makes sense. Tech and consulting layoffs correllate pretty closely with stock market bottoms, and the market usually recovers nicely in the following twelve months. So although my savings has eroded somewhat, my mutual funds have appreciated much more. So remember: buy stocks whenever I lose my job!

The next most common inquiry concerns biking, and I have such a tale of woe about the incompetence of my bike shop. Sparing you the details, my bike has been in and out of the shop since the Fourth of July, and has been completely out of commission since early August, while two major components were shipped back their manufacturers (one of them twice).

Meanwhile, I’d been putting a lot of miles on my Bike Friday folding bike, including my first century ride on it. The folder isn’t bad, although I will complain that it’s heavy, which means I can’t climb hills as well on it.

Thankfully, I just got the reassembled bike back from the shop, and after all that travail, it’s running fine. Just in time for cold weather, of course. There’s a lengthy writeup about the whole long ordeal here.

Since I measure my cycling year from mid-October to mid-October, I just concluded my 2008-2009 season. I wound up with 4,000 miles on the road and about 500 more on the indoor trainer. With five centuries under my belt, it was a really good year.

In other news, Boston’s bike coordinator has targeted my street, Commonwealth Ave, for some very non-standard bike lanes. I’ll be curious to see how they pan out.

The deadline for PMC fundraising has passed, and this year I raised a total of $8,266, which is pretty good for a recession year. My lifetime total is now $52,657. The check presentation isn’t until December 5th this year.

This also seems to be the year I started sea kayaking. After expeditions with my brother and my CIMC friends, I also spent three hours recently on a very choppy Charles River basin, having rented from Charles River Canoe & Kayak’s new Kendall Square location. My obliques got a real heavy workout. Once I’ve got an income, I really do have to start thinking about picking up a boat. Meanwhile, I’m looking into my storage options, which are limited in my condo.

Indoors, I recently re-read Alan Watts’ "Wisdom of Insecurity", an awesome little tome that was my first serious exposure to Buddhist philosophy, back in January 2003 (original review). I’ve also just re-read Robert Anton Wilson’s 1975 "Illuminatus!" trilogy, which was interesting, especially when some of the details of his dystopian future turn out to be accurate predictions of policies enacted by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. Here’s an excerpt:

"Their grip on Washington is still pretty precarious. […] If they showed their hand now and went totalitarian all the way, there would be a revolution. Middle-roaders would rise up with right-wingers, and left-libertarians, and [they] aren’t powerful enough to withstand that kind of massive revolution. But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution."

"What sort of tools?"

"More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. […] The people reason—or are manipulated into reasoning—that the entire populace must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can’t be trusted."

Online, I’ve put some time into finally revamping OrnothLand. The new version can be seen at http://www.ornoth.com/. I was pleased to be able to easily include my most recent Twitter tweet, Livejournal blog and cycling blog posts, and Flickr photograph by parsing their RSS feeds. And I’ve implemented (although not perfected) long-desired features like the ability to search through past entries as well as see only what’s new since your last visit.

A couple notes on Facebook, while I’m here. A while ago I stopped getting notifications when a friend added another friend to their list. I miss that feature, which was sacrificed to one of Facebook’s rewrites; however, now it seems to be about to come back. On the other hand, I also recently stopped getting notifications every time a friend took a quiz or took an action in one of their applications, and I have to say that’s been a godsend, and saved several inane people from being un-friended. I’d already manually ignored 787 applications, but I haven’t added to that list in several weeks.

I’ve also spent some of my free time expanding my cooking repertoire, which has paid nice dividends. I started with basic stuff that I’ve cooked before but hadn’t in years, like roasted beets, roasted potatoes, sour cream cookies, tollhouse cookies, brownies, and my family’s traditional spaghetti sauce, which I modified to include a bit more heat. I added steamed broccoli to the list of things I’d make, and I continue to experiment to figure out how to make stir-fry that doesn’t produce allergic headaches. Sadly, I think garlic and onions are the culprits. I also just made Hi-Rise Bakery’s vanilla loaf, which came out nicely, but boy is that one expensive piece of bread!

People often ask about Grady… He’s doing okay. Nothing really to mention there. He’s mellowed out a bit, even to the point of tolerating being held, but he’s still quite the little athletic hunter, especially when it comes to wadded up balls of paper. I should probably take and post some more pictures of him.

Speaking of photos, this photo of mine will be displayed in two five foot long resin displays at the Red Rock Canyon Visitor’s Center outside Las Vegas. Very cool thing to add to the resume/portfolio, and it’s another paying client. And made another photo expedition to the top of Boston’s Custom House tower; results (here).

On a side note, my friend Inna is DJing a show on Duquesne student radio. Visit wdsr.org Fridays from 5-7pm.

Closer to home, this is a big year for Boston politics. There’s a big mayoral vote this year, plus the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

The autumnal equinox has passed, which means the end of summer, which I hate to see go. The fourth quarter is always the worst time of year for me, starting with my birthday, which as usual I’ll thank you not to observe. I’ve been kicking around ideas of what to do, but I suspect it’ll look a lot like last year’s observance… hopefully with the same result!

October and November look to be very busy at the sangha, as there are two big events coming up. In October I’m participating in a metta (lovingkindness) practice group. I’ve sometimes scoffed at metta practice for being simplistic and pointless, but at the same time, all the challenges I encounter in my practice are pointing me in that direction. So this’ll be an interesting experiment. And there’s also the annual Sandwich Retreat in early November, which is always revelatory. You can of course expect writeups. And there are several interesting topics and speakers at CIMC’s Wednesday evening dharma talks. So it’s going to be an intense couple months of sitting motionlessly with one’s eyes closed.

That’ll be quite a change, tho. The center was closed for their usual summer hiatus, and until recently I’d seen very few of the people in my dharma circle since July. I miss that. Unfortunately, the previously copacetic dynamic has deteriorated after some of the usual adolescent antics. It saddens me, even though I know that change is, of course, inevitable.

I should take a second to record a couple interesting tidbits from the most recent talk, given by John Peacock. There were three key points he made that resonated with me, each from a context outside Buddhism, in addition to coming from completely separate contexts from each other.

One of his main points was to approach life with a sense of wonder, to see things deeply and anew as they are encountered. By looking at a tree and seeing "a tree", our minds see little more than our pre-existing conceptual model of "a tree", rather than the specific instance before us, which might differ radically from that mental construct, and is certainly much more vibrant and alive. This obscures reality and inhibits one’s ability to see special and meaningful details that make this tree unique. It’s these kinds of penetrative insights that also give a fiction writer the experience and the vocabulary to build a compelling mental image of a scene, which is a belief I’ve held strongly since writing an article about Tolkien’s use of vocabulary for a fanzine thirty-five years ago. You can see one incarnation of that particular rant on the DargonZine site, at http://www.dargonzine.org/dpww/docs/wonder.txt. So you can imagine how John’s words about wonder and careful observation resonated with me.

Another interesting bit was John’s response to a question I asked that went something like this:

Having a background in Tibetan Buddhism as well as Theravada and IMS, you seem singularly qualified to speak on the topic of viewing Buddhism along a continuum from extremely rational and scientific to extremely superstitious and ritualized. I don’t know how it is at IMS or Oxford, where you teach, but here at CIMC we hear almost nothing about jhana (concentration) practice, despite the fact that it is very heavily emphasized in the Pali canon. Where on that spectrum do you see jhana practice falling?

The response was that jhana practice is useful in developing concentration, but he seemed skeptical about the existence of the specific sublime mind states described in the suttas. He also said that the suttas actually equivocate, pointing specifically to Majjhima Nikaya Sutta 26, the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (The Noble Search). That sutta includes the Buddha’s unsatisfying search for enlightenment by studying under other Indian teachers, many of whom taught concentration practice. So the canon seems to imply that concentration practice is helpful, but not sufficient.

Finally, John was presented with the standard Buddhist question that sets Buddhist virtues of patience and acceptance of life as it is against the human desire to correct injustice and make progress (positive change) in the world. The answer is, of course, that wise action is virtous, but the important factors are that one perform such actions with a wholesome intent rather than coming from a place of aversion, and that one must perform all actions without becoming so attached to a specific result that it causes suffering if it does not come about. This relates very closely to managing one’s expectations. I first learned the importance of expectation management in my professional consulting career at Sapient, where common knowledge held that one should always under-promise and over-deliver, so as to always exceed clients’ expectations. A yogi should bring that same attitude to the actions they take in the world, letting go of the attachment to a particular outcome, and being delighted if things transpire in a positive way.

Finally, I’ve taken a bit of time to do some formal goal-setting for 2010. Here’s what I’ve got:

• Get a new job
• Travel to the Bay Area and:
  • Participate in the annual Buddhist Bicycle Pilgrimage
  • Meet and thank Gil Fronsdal
  • Hang out with some of my friends in the area
• Complete my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge
  • Possibly crossing the entire state by starting in New York State
  • Exceed $60,000 lifetime fundraising
  • 5th consecutive heavy hitter
• Participate in at least one week-long residential meditation retreat

So those are some of the things that have transpired over the past couple months. Although my cycling blog will be a bit less active in coming months, hopefully this one will get a little more attention, even if it may not be the most exciting reading in the world.

Every so often I’ve mentioned my former wife here, mostly in terms of her effect on my life or my current emotional state. She really is one of the best things to ever happen to me. But bless her soul, she had the homemaking skills of Paris Hilton. Here’s one of my all-time favorite stories…

At one point during college we lived in a tiny apartment that was essentially carved out of a hallway in a New England farmhouse. As such, the front door opened directly into our kitchen.

My love did most of the cooking, and usually did passably well, but she was just learning, and there were occasional accidents. When something got a little bit smokey or reduced to a sticky goo, she’d take the offending pan outside and leave it by the door until it had cooled down and stunk less.

Now this was up in northern Maine, where snow happens eight months of the year. So usually it got dropped on a snowbank. And often it would be actively snowing during one of these culinary misadventures. The snow that piled up on the pan kinda made the mess a little worse, but only if you went out and got the pans afterward. If you didn’t…

Yeah. If you didn’t get them, then by morning the snow would have piled up and hid the entire offensive mess from view under a pristine layer of pretty white fluff. And my wife quickly realized that if that happened, no one noticed, and she didn’t have to deal with the mess at all!

Of course, as winter dragged on, the little woman’s culinary repertoire would be increasingly limited by the dwindling stock of available cookware. When the spring thaw finally came, we celebrated Easter by finding six to ten rusted skillets, pans, and pots strewn all over the front lawn. And then we could eat anything we wanted for four whole months, until October’s first snows, when the cycle of the seasons began again…